{"product_id":"tolstoy-on-shakespeare-a-critical-essay-on-shakespeare-9781989708460","title":"Tolstoy on Shakespeare: A Critical Essay on Shakespeare","description":"\u003cp\u003e • Author(s): Leo Tolstoy\u003cbr\u003e • Publisher: Binker North\u003cbr\u003e • Publisher Imprint: Binker North\u003cbr\u003e • BISAC: Shakespeare\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eLeo Tolstoy, 1906: \"I remember the astonishment I felt when I first read Shakespeare. I expected to receive a powerful aesthetic pleasure, but having read, one after the other, works regarded as his best: \"King Lear,\" \"Romeo and Juliet,\" \"Hamlet\" and \"Macbeth,\" not only did I feel no delight, but I felt an irresistible repulsion and tedium... Several times I read the dramas and the comedies and historical plays, and I invariably underwent the same feelings: repulsion, weariness, and bewilderment. At the present time, before writing this preface, being desirous once more to test myself, I have, as an old man of seventy-five, again read the whole of Shakespeare, including the historical plays, the \"Henrys,\" \"Troilus and Cressida,\" \"The Tempest\", \"Cymbeline\", and I have felt, with even greater force, the same feelings, --this time, however, not of bewilderment, but of firm, indubitable conviction that the unquestionable glory of a great genius which Shakespeare enjoys, and which compels writers of our time to imitate him and readers and spectators to discover in him non-existent merits, --thereby distorting their aesthetic and ethical understanding, --is a great evil, as is every untruth.\" Tolstoy on Shakespeare\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Binker North","offers":[{"title":"Paperback","offer_id":47615950061719,"sku":"9781989708460","price":1120.0,"currency_code":"INR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0666\/3471\/1191\/files\/9781989708460.webp?v=1775103689","url":"https:\/\/atlanticbooks.com\/products\/tolstoy-on-shakespeare-a-critical-essay-on-shakespeare-9781989708460","provider":"Atlantic Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}